The Apple in the Mirror: Reflections on Our Hunger for the Extraordinary

So I'm sitting here, staring at this half-eaten Gala apple on my desk, possibly looking like The Son of Man. It's just an apple, you might say. Correction: you'd almost certainly say, because who the hell spends time contemplating the existential implications of partially consumed fruit? But bear with me, because this apple - this utterly unremarkable, mass-produced apple - has become an impromptu Rorschach test for my entire worldview.

Think about it for a second. When was the last time you really tasted an apple? Not just chewed and swallowed in that mindless way we do when we're shoveling food as fuel into our bodies between Important Tasks, but actually experienced it? The snap of skin giving way to flesh, the burst of juice, the interplay of sweet and tart? (Unless you're eating a Red Delicious, in which case, what's wrong with you?)

If you're anything like me (and for your sake, I hope you're not), the answer is probably "I can't remember." And that's... something, isn't it? Something worth unpacking, if we're brave (or stupid) enough to peek inside as if it's a Pandora's box of modern ennui.

We live in a culture pathologically obsessed with the extraordinary. Our social media feeds are Lament Configuration Boxes of dopamine hits, each scroll or swipe offering another chance at vicarious amazement. Look at this sunset! Marvel at this career achievement! Behold the perfect avocado toast, situated just so against a background of Scandinavian minimalism!

It's exhausting, isn't it? This relentless parade of Other People's Highlights? And yet we can't look away. We're trapped in a kind of psychic arms race, each of us trying to out-amaze the other in a game that has no winners, only varying degrees of losers.

I've been complicit in this, of course. For years, I measured my worth by a series of increasingly arbitrary metrics: promotions, awards, and degrees (oh my!). Each achievement was a notch on some cosmic bedpost of success, undeniable proof I was Somebody Who Mattered.

Except... I never felt like I mattered. Not really. There was always someone doing more, achieving greater things, living a life that seemed infinitely more Share-worthy than my own. The goalposts kept moving, and I kept chasing, a hamster on a wheel powered by anxiety and imposter syndrome [1] 

I'm reminded of a conversation I had with my friend Emily [2] last year. She'd just landed her dream job at one of those tech companies that sounds like it was named by a toddler playing with refrigerator magnets. I called to congratulate her, expecting the verbal equivalent of a victory lap. Instead, I got... nothing. A void. The conversational equivalent of that moment in a horror movie right before the jump scare.

"Thanks," she said, with the enthusiasm of someone selecting a coffin. "But honestly, I don't know how to feel. I thought reaching this goal would make me happy, but now I'm just stressed about proving myself and wondering what's next."

Her words hit me, How many times had I achieved something I'd been striving for, only to find the satisfaction as fleeting as a snowflake in July? How often had I immediately replaced one anxiety with another, like some sort of emotional shell game where happiness is always under the next cup?

This cycle of endless striving isn't just exhausting - it's a trap. We become so focused on reaching the next peak that we miss the beauty of the climb itself. We forget to look around and appreciate the view, too busy planning our Instagram caption for when we reach the summit. We climb, with the summit always just out of reach. We forget to look back and see how far we've come. We see someone on a peak ahead of us and trudge on assuming the view must be better.

Winners achieve the extraordinary. Losers are everyone else.

I recall stumbling upon a poem talking about teaching children to find wonder in ordinary things - the taste of fruit, the touch of a hand, the act of crying when pets die. The final lines have been rattling around in my brain like a loose bolt in an old car:

"And make the ordinary come alive for them. The extraordinary will take care of itself."

These words challenged me to reconsider what success really means. What if, instead of chasing extraordinary achievements, we focused on bringing extraordinary attention to ordinary moments? What if the key to happiness isn't doing amazing things, but amazingly appreciating the things we're already doing?

Bill Waterson of Calvin and Hobbes fame gave a commencement speech reiterating the same:

Creating a life that reflects your values and satisfies your soul is a rare achievement. In a culture that relentlessly promotes avarice and excess as the good life, a person happy doing his own work is usually considered an eccentric, if not a subversive. Ambition is only understood if it's to rise to the top of some imaginary ladder of success. Someone who takes an undemanding job because it affords him the time to pursue other interests and activities is considered a flake. A person who abandons a career in order to stay home and raise children is considered not to be living up to his potential-as if a job title and salary are the sole measure of human worth.

You'll be told in a hundred ways, some subtle and some not, to keep climbing, and never be satisfied with where you are, who you are, and what you're doing. There are a million ways to sell yourself out, and I guarantee you'll hear about them.

To invent your own life's meaning is not easy, but it's still allowed, and I think you'll be happier for the trouble. 

I'm not saying we need to lower our ambitions or embrace mediocrity. But maybe we should recognize that life - real, rich, meaningful life - happens in the spaces between the big moments (and we have far more space between the big moments than we have big moments). It's in how we treat the person making our coffee. It's in the small acts of kindness we show our loved ones. It's in our ability to find wonder and gratitude in simple things, like, say, a half-eaten apple on a desk.

I've been in a perpetual shift of my perspective. To be more present in the everyday stuff of life. It's not easy - those old habits of constantly striving and comparing are hard to break. They hang around like that ancient suitcase in your closet, the one you never use but can't seem to throw away. You know you should get rid of it, but some part of you insists it might come in handy someday[3]. Just like how we cling to our old ways of measuring success, even when we know they're not serving us anymore.

But I'm working on it. Now, when I eat an apple, I try to really taste it. When I'm out for a walk, I pay attention to the feeling of sun on my skin, the sound of leaves rustling, the rhythm of my own breath. I'm letting myself feel things more deeply, too. Crying at movies without embarrassment. Laughing out loud at dumb jokes. Telling people I care about them, even if it feels like I'm auditioning for a Hallmark movie.

And you know what? It's changing things. Not in any dramatic, earth-shattering way. But in small, cumulative ways that are adding up to something that feels a lot like contentment. Or at least, what I imagine contentment might feel like if I weren't so busy being extraordinary.

When I don't view true success as achieving extraordinary things and when I bring extraordinary attention and appreciation to ordinary life, I start to feel all the things I thought I'd feel when I reached the achievement-of-the-moment. There is something to be said for being fully present for the small moments that, strung together, make up the bulk of our existence.

I'm still figuring it out, this new way of looking at things. But already, I feel a shift. A lightening of the constant pressure to achieve and compete. A deepening appreciation for the life I'm living right now, not some imagined future state where everything will finally be perfect (spoiler alert: it won't be).

So now, as I look at this half-eaten apple on my desk, I see more than just a piece of fruit. I see a reminder to slow down, to pay attention, to find wonder in the everyday[4]. And in doing so, to make the ordinary come alive. Extraordinary will take care of itself.

[1] I've never actually seen a hamster on a wheel in real life. Is this just one of those cultural metaphors we all agree to pretend makes sense or do hamsters actually do this?

[2] Names have been changed to protect the terminally ambitious. 

[3] What if I suddenly need to transport a small elephant, or re-enact a scene from a 1940s film noir?

[4] But not too long because nobody wants to eat a brown apple.